About Me

Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. Author of FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND THE SECULAR STATE (2012), HUMANITY ENHANCED (2014), and THE MYSTERY OF MORAL AUTHORITY (2016).

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Currently reading: Love and Sex with Robots by David Levy

This is a fascinating book, even more than it sounds. Levy has gone to a lot of effort to study the psychology of sexual attraction and the social history of sex, in an attempt to understand how readily human beings will fall in love with lifelike robots and (literally) embrace them as sexual partners. There are lots of things to learn from Levy, many of them tangential to the main theme - not least, he provides some good information on how to make people fall in love with you. I.e. he discusses what psychologists have learned about the process. But the book's analysis is flawed by a very crude behaviorist view of consciousness.